Must hit the road shortly to take the Democracy Train down to San Diego for tonight's Emergency Townhall on the Busby/Bilbray election results fiasco. If you're anywhere near San Diego or Oceanside please come out tonight! We had a great time last night in Los Angeles!

More on all of these as soon as I can catch my breath. The fine lower-cased blogger, skippy the bush kangaroo, was amongst those in attendance last night (as was Joseph Cannon of Cannonfire) and so I'll defer for the moment to skippy's coverage (since I don't have time for any of my own right). Skippy got a coupla small points slighly wrong, but I suspect he'll update since I let him know. As BRAD BLOG readers realize, unlike with AP and NY Times accuracy counts for bloggers.

Lou Dobbs report last night on the Brennan Center's year-in-the-making report on 120 threats to E-Voting Security was fan-damn-tastic. When I can catch my breath, I hope to get it, along with the video, posted in full. And more thoughts on that Brennan Center report. But for now, by way of teaser, Dobbs started it this way: "More evidence tonight that an increasing number of elections in this country can be outright stolen. And no one would ever know. It's incredible."

And, as of this hour, here are the results from his "Quick Poll" on this topic last night (you can still vote yourselves if you want)

Any questions? We're told he'll still be on the same beat tonight (6pm ET, 3pm PT --- you can send thank you notes/comments here to Dobbs for all of his very responsible coverage over the past three weeks and counting!)

Last, but most certainly not least, Washington Post covered the Brennan Center report themselves this morning. They highlighted the very message we've been trying to convey to Francine Busby, the voters in San Diego and across the nation over the last three weeks. The WaPo article begins this way...

A Single Person Could Swing an Election

To determine what it would take to hack a U.S. election, a team of cybersecurity experts turned to a fictional battleground state called Pennasota and a fictional gubernatorial race between Tom Jefferson and Johnny Adams. It's the year 2007, and the state uses electronic voting machines.

Jefferson was forecast to win the race by about 80,000 votes, or 2.3 percent of the vote. Adams's conspirators thought, "How easily can we manipulate the election results?"

The experts thought about all the ways to do it. And they concluded in a report issued yesterday that it would take only one person, with a sophisticated technical knowledge and timely access to the software that runs the voting machines, to change the outcome...

IMO, I don't think it really matters if the machines go on a sleep over or not, they've got this rigging thing in the bag if you go by all the articles that Dugger wrote.
All we can do now is get rid of them

Yeah Brad, give em hell
Just keep nailing them down on each security issue
Pretty soon there will be no more machines, because there is no way in hell that they can meet all of the issues to keep the elections secure with them hack boxes

Cynthia McKinny has a letter on waynemadsenreport asking for donations. She says last election, she had 1,000 people at the polls making sure they started the day with 0 balance. Next election, this won't be allowed in Georgia. Lou Dobbs probably wouldn't go for that info. because of her race. I like her a lot.After Katrina, I called a lot of congress people's offices to see if they couldn't do something to get people off their roof2bd58s and stuff. Her office staff were the only ones who seemed to care.

A really strange thing just happened to me. I dialed my daughter's number (she lives elsewhere in the state, Maine), and the phone rang for a while, clicked, and then rang some more. A man's taped voice said, "You have reached the voice mail of Scott McClellan..." and I hung up. I dialed a second time and my daughter answered. SPOOKY!!

it was an exciting evening, brad, and i was honored to be a small part of it (thanks for the shout out from the stage...it made me feel like a celebrity pundit!), and i also appreciate the link to my reportage of the evening.

i also appreciate your corrections of the minor details which i got wrong (i was taking notes as fast as i could, but my handwriting sucks). but, being lazy, what i did was simply reproduce your email with the corrections on my blog (with a link to the original post).

as i said, this is the most important issue facing america, and, like you, i'm shocked that the bigger blogs aren't jumping on this like fleas on a hound dog. colorful metaphors aside, as our mutual bud chicago dyke of correntewire said, what's the point about blogging about various political issues if our votes don't count?

i plan to be at the quarterly los angeles county registrars meeting w/the public, and will report on same.

See what MSM exposure does??? This shows how BADLY they hurt democracy, by waiting so long to shine light on it. Why did they wait so long? So, if ONE person can swing an election on e-vote machines, is it such a stretch that Bush didn't win the 2004 election? And it was stolen on e-vote machines? The MSM STILL is not addressing the 8 million vote swing from the exit polls to the "COUNT ON ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES." That's your next story, Lou...

THANK YOU, LOU DOBBS! There's more and more supposedly "tin foil" hat theorists. So now we ALSO know, that the people who were calling this "tin foil hat" theories, were trying to keep e-vote fraud in the dark. Where are these guys now? The people who's strategy was to discredit valid claims, by calling it "tin foil hat"??? There's another issue they're calling "tin foil hat", but that's a whole 'nuther subject...Maybe we just know what we're talking about, but no one was listening!!! There's only logic, statistics, and proff on our side, that's all.

Does everyone agree that it seems you don't see the Republican Noise machine in the MSM debunking this anymore??? Usually, they get out their "second truth" story to confuse people. It's (to me) very strange they aren't floating false stories or smearing Lou Dobbs or the people speaking out about this. Very strange. But good! Silence on the disinformation front? Why this time? They know if they float out misinformation stories in the MSM, it'll bring even MORE attention to the issue? That shows how big of an issue this is.

Wow: A single person could swing an election. Like maybe even...a single person enjoying a 'sleepover' with a machine in their garage...NOT that I'm suggesting any of them DID or WOULD, mind you. I'm quite sure they are all above reproach.
But still, given this teensy problem of easily-hackable voting machines running around in people's garages with the tush-flap on their security jammies down (and not to mention the myriad other ills infesting our good land at the moment),
you really have to hand it to bow-tie-wearin' cupie-doll orrin hatch:

"On the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said there was nothing the Senate could be doing that was more important than banning flag burning...

...Is Hatch familar with the Iraq war, terrorism, the energy crisis, the 45 million Americans without health insurance or the 37 million Americans living in poverty?..."

Evidently not. But you can't expect him to keep up with EVERYTHING! And being a senator is HARD WORK!
watch video

A single person can turn an election...
Hmmmmm...
I'm applying to be a poll worker. I figure I can turn an election. Civil disobedience. And whoever from the Gov is watching this blog - y'all know where to find me.
If I'm a poll worker and I can find a hacker to help me, as I don't know any more than the on/off button on this computer... I'll try to have the Dem candidate win with 99%. Or maybe the Green.
Then what do they do, seat the "winner" or admit that maybe there's a prob with the computer voting machines?
I myself know nothing of computer screw ups (or, as some call it, "crashing"); do any of y'all???
Don't know why anybody would worry about entrusting the most sacred right of a free civilization to a computer, which few know any more about how to work or if it's gonna work than I do of this computer, which crashes on a regular basis...
So, if any of y'all wanna help, just get yourself accepted as a poll worker. If you get a sleepover with a machine, maybe you can hack it so that the Greens win 99%...
Just remember to out-hack their hackers...
Wonder if the Mafia got any of their boys to be poll workers? Al Quida? That would make elections fun...
No, so far only the Republicans have gotten good at election hacking. Let's get busy, Dem hacks. It's pretty much the only way we have of fighting; going down and dirty like they do...

Catherine Crier had a report on E voting machines and Our stolen Democracy 6/21 on court tv. I like Catherine ,I saw a spot she did on cnn that Brad posted. It was so good I never saw her sub on cnn again. If I'm not mistaken it was also about E voting machines.http://www.courttv.com/onair/shows/crierlive/link

Hi,
Here's is the Susan Davis reply re: voting and swearing in Bilbray before election results were certified that I mentioned to you at the San Diego Townhall Meeting. I couldn't figure out how to send it to you other than as a reply to one of your blogs.
My reply to hers is also below.

Thank you for your recent e-mail message. I appreciate hearing from you and apologize for the delay in my response. I receive more than one thousand letters and e-mails during the average week, and it often takes longer than I would like to respond.

You are not alone in your concerns about our nation's electoral process. I heard from many San Diegans concerned about the possibility of voter fraud, equipment malfunctions, software inadequacies and ballot tampering in the November elections. The 2000 elections also left many of us questioning the reliability of our electoral system, and I assure you that I have been working diligently to ensure that no voter is ever disenfranchised again.

That is why I co-sponsored the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act (H.R. 550) which would provide voters with a paper "receipt" of their vote. This tangible record would assure voters of the accuracy of their vote while still providing election officials with a means to verify vote counts in the event of equipment or software malfunctions.

I also supported H.R. 3295, the Help America Vote Act, which provided new funding to states to replace punch card voting systems and make other voting structure improvements, and established an Election Assistance Commission to assist with the state and local administration of federal elections. This long overdue legislation also allowed voters to make corrections or adjustments to their choices before their vote is registered. While these bills represent a positive step in the right direction, only one of them – HR. 3295 – has actually been passed by Congress.

In answer to your question about the certification of the election of Representative Brian Bilbray, it is my understanding that he was sworn in once there were enough votes counted to be mathematically certain that he had won the election. Producing an exact, final tally can take weeks. If any irregularities that could change the outcome of an election come to light, the San Diego Registrar of Voters would have to determine the best course of action to take.

Please rest assured that I will continue advocating for increased accountability and transparency in our nation's elections, and I will certainly keep your suggestions for election standards and reform in mind as we debate this issue in Congress.

Once again, thank you for contacting me. As your representative, I both need and value your perspective. Please sign up for my E-Newsletter at my website, www.house.gov/susandavis, if you would like to receive monthly updates about what is happening in Congress.

With warm regards,

Susan A. Davis
Member of Congress

===============================
Dear Congresswoman Davis:

Thank you so much for your reply to my email message. It seems fairly personalized and for that, I thank you even more. I also thank you for all the work you have done to help protect voters’ rights.

I’d like to make two points in regard to your reply.

In regard to your sentence: “In answer to your question about the certification of the election of Representative Brian Bilbray, it is my understanding that he was sworn in once there were enough votes counted to be mathematically certain that he had won the election.”

One can never be certain of an election’s outcome until all the votes are accurately counted. Statistically, one can say that a particular outcome is more or less likely (or probable), but one can never be statistically certain.

Furthermore, the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 2, Clause 1) says the following:
“The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.”

It says “the People of the several States” choose the members of the House of Representatives. Until the election results are certified by the proper authority of a state, the people have NOT chosen.

As a Congressperson, you are sworn to uphold the Constitution. The issue as to when a person can be sworn into the House of Representatives is not a minor one. There are procedures which the Constitution of the United States and other federal and state laws require which must be upheld. Regardless of how statistically likely an election’s outcome is, an election is not over until the state has certified the results. Until such time, no one should be sworn in as a member of Congress.

Finally, it’s very important that the integrity of voting be maintained across the United States. The security of the voting machines in San Diego was extremely compromised in the June 6, 2006 elections due to being taken home by temporary poll workers. I have absolutely no faith in the election results until a hand count has been made.

The points I made above cannot be emphasized enough and I find it difficult to understand why you and the rest of the Democrats in Congress are not concerned about them.

That's f*ckin' scary. And don't think they aren't actually recording each call (in the "terrorist" surveilance program). How much space would a low bitrate recording actually take? And I mean EVERY call. Mine, yours, hers, his, theirs, everybody's calls. They can store it and data mine it later. Technology is to the point that they could do this. As such, I think we have to assume that they are "taking all possible measure to protect the homeland." Scumbags. What happened to our rights?

Also, consider that this type of technology would NEVER be OK'd by a FISA court, explaining the need to go around a FISA court. Imagine the blackmailing possible with this sort of setup.

if you want to overpower your political opponent
just intercept their communications,.. mail,.. phone,..
cell phone,.. email/Internet,.. bug the candidates
offices/automobile,.. GPS their each and every move.

But bu$$h/rove/cheney et al,.. would not pull something so unethical as this,.. how could I even entertain the thought that they might consider such
a deplorable thing ?

Wish I could agree with you but, unfortunately, the Republican spinmeisters are still out there, pushing back hard on this issue. I was at the Town Hall meeting in San Diego Wednesday night, along with a little over 100 people (including Jim Lampley), and one of the speakers, Mimi Kennedy, of PDA and TV fame, spoke eloquently and passionately on this very issue (as well as on others). She discussed an article that appeared in the Op-Ed Section of the LA Times on June 25, titled "The GOP knows you don't like anchovies". It was, in essence, an attempt to indirectly explain away discrepancies between polls before the election and the apparent "final" tally of the actual election, mainly by furthering the myth that the Republicans just have it figured out better than Democrats when it comes to getting out the vote. Problem is, they are claiming to have sent operatives in and collected so many Republican absentee ballots in the weekend before they were due that they were able to overcome a significant Democratic advantage in absentee ballots in the 50th Special Congressional District Race and replace it with a greater than 10,000 Republican absentee ballot lead. People at the meeting who had participated in these kinds of vote garnering efforts said that it is extremely unlikely that any amount of Republican effort, especially on a spring weekend in Southern Calif., would be able to generate those kinds of numbers. There was no mention in the article about the voting machine sleepover controversy. Just an explanation of why the Republicans are simply better at this kind of thing, so, apparently we should just lick our wounds and go home, beaten by the "better" man. The article was written by the authors of a the book: "One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century".

This is becoming a classic Right-Wing technique to explain away the increasing number of upset victories, always by Republicans. Somehow, these thugs, who are so utterly inept at everything for which we can see tangible evidence and results, are supposed to be geniuses when it comes to elections (and other issues like the war on terror, secret surveillance, and all the things whose hidden workings and measures of success are hidden from us). The only thing these people are actually good at is stealing elections and creating barriers to honest elections.

The Town Hall Meeting was quite excellent and Brad was remarkable in his eloquence and in his clear and compelling synthesis of the issues, as usual. I'm sure he will be posting more on this soon and skippy's coverage of the event in LA that Brad linked to above sounds generally similar to the experience in San Diego (although we did stand and march around with signs at a rally for an hour or so before the meeting).

One important thing that did happen at this meeting was that Mimi Kennedy sent out and then collected pieces of paper on which we wrote our addresses, e-mail, etc. and made a pledge of money that they may call on to help pay for a lawyer to get the ball rolling on legal actions (if it comes to that) in San Diego and California in regards to the illegal election that took place in the 50th Congressional District on June 6th. I'm sure she wouldn't be upset if you e-mailed her, "Mimi Kennedy, PDA" atinfo@pdamerica.org and offered her some kind of monetary pledge, as well.

The reply from Rep. Susan Davis reads like something Francine Busby would have written. It reads just like John Kerry's concession on Nov. 3, 2004.

"Mathematically certain..." "Not enough provisional ballots to make up the difference..." "The Secretary of State can still proclaim me the winner..."

Can't anyone say FRAUD? It is no longer a matter of debate that the 2004 election could have been stolen in Ohio (and in every other battleground state) by electronic means. It now comes out that this was doable by remote control access to voting machines and presumably to central tabulators. Even easier than installing a computer virus, which happens all the time. Probably easier than tapping our phones. All the b.s. we heard about "It would take a vast conspiracy" is utter nonsense.

So what about a massive class-action suit? Force the Democratic leadership to take a stand "YEA" or "NAY" on the question (yes, Dredd, the Republicans did the fraud, but only Democrats have the ability to call them on it). DON'T VOTE FOR ANY DEMOCRAT WHO DOESN'T SUPPORT A CLASS-ACTION SUIT, OR AT LEAST PUBLICLY CALLS FOR A FULL CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION OF THE 2004 ELECTION (and Schmidt/Hackett and Bilbray/Busby).

Being from Utah, all I can say is I'm sorry, a thousand times, sorry! We are naked.

I, personally think he was sent here from Pittsburg by Reagan.

If you combined a song he wrote, "Heal The Land" with John Ashcroft's, "Let The Eagle Soar", you could have, "Heal The Eagle's Sores". Actually, I'm pretty sure they began Bush's inauguration with those two songs!

yes, Dredd, the Republicans did the fraud, but only Democrats have the ability to call them on it

Some republicans may want to associate themselves with justice and realize that they, like the dems did with Jefferson, must police themselves to be considered a non-corrupt party.

And republican party members that are not members of congress and who only vote in elections, are also likely to want to be seen as law abiding citizens, and therefore advocate prosecuting republicans when republicans commit fraud or even bamk robbery.

Some republicans would want to prosecute democrats when republicans commit fraud, but that is the kool aid tin foil hat gang that the republicans would want to be the tiny, tiny minority in their party.

The fact is that the ethics committee rules were changed by DeLay republicans so that he could stay on as leader even tho indicted for felonies.

So what exactly should democrats do for republicans in such cases? I mean it is not like only democrats know about those wrongs ... the republicans know about them too. In fact the republicans are more likely to know about shadow wrongs they commit than dems are.

Its the search for justice RLM, not the search for a scapegoat that will heal the process.

Election fraud is not new, it is always
These faces of people reruning the Reagan era are just that. They give us two lives like Samuel K Doe did give his people many lives.
They never step in any university classroom but they teach University Professors. Yes, like in Samuel K Doe time, we need Secret Service, police,.. to survive (they know the answer in this polling). It was NOT saved to be a real General or University Professors then (Samuel K Doe time), their writing and speeches were scrutinized. Long live in the Jack, Linda, William World, does it remind you something. Let use it as electoral shah performance. Is it Linda ...time?, vote for Linda, is it Jack time?, vote for Jack...
Do not worry about others suffering about this ignorance of time value, today's time score. This is a neo-fraud...
Arthur Mboue